CVE-2024-56138 Timestamp signature generation lacks certificate revocation check in notion-go

Medium 4.0 Published Updated

Attackers can bypass certificate revocation checks during timestamp generation, potentially causing denial of service in CI/CD environments via malicious countersignatures.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Local or same network only
Victim action needed
Not needed
Fix
Available

What is CVE-2024-56138?

CVE-2024-56138 is a medium-severity vulnerability in notaryproject notation-go, published on 13 Jan 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

notion-go is a collection of libraries for supporting sign and verify OCI artifacts. Based on Notary Project specifications. This issue was identified during Quarkslab's audit of the timestamp feature. During the timestamp signature generation, the revocation status of the certificate(s) used to generate the timestamp signature was not verified. During timestamp signature generation, notation-go did not check the revocation status of the certificate chain used by the TSA. This oversight creates a vulnerability that could be exploited through a Man-in-The-Middle attack. An attacker could potentially use a compromised, intermediate, or revoked leaf certificate to generate a malicious countersignature, which would then be accepted and stored by `notation`. This could lead to denial of service scenarios, particularly in CI/CD environments during signature verification processes because timestamp signature would fail due to the presence of a revoked certificate(s) potentially disrupting operations. This issue has been addressed in release version 1.3.0-rc.2 and all users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Weakness: CWE-299

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-56138?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/notaryproject/notation-go.

PackageAffectedFixed in
github.com/notaryproject/notation-go GoFrom 1.2.0-beta.11.3.0-rc.2
github.com/notaryproject/notation-go GoFrom 1.2.0-beta.11.3.0-rc.2
github.com/notaryproject/notation-go GoFrom 1.2.0-beta.11.3.0-rc.2

How do I fix CVE-2024-56138?

Upgrade github.com/notaryproject/notation-go to 1.3.0-rc.2 or later.

Is CVE-2024-56138 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-56138 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2024-56138, GHSA-45v3-38pc-874v, GO-2025-3381, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-56138.

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